Very easy. Limit inventory size + weight. And fuck <<auto sending>> stuff wherever. You want QUALITY OF LIFE?!?! Whats the point even moving around exploring? What a pain, clicking everywhere. Just make EVERYTHING AUTO.
The more quality of life people wants, the worst the <<<RPG experience>>> game exponentially gets.
You can still keep all your facorite JUNK items in the world for your <<<immersion>>> (though I think these should not even exist in the game...you didnt have spoons, plates etc...in BG2) yet make players THINK on what to carry based on their characters stats and class. Its an RPG after all.
No. I disagree here. There is an in between. Too much immersion is tedious and no fun.
For example, I played Outbound. Decent game, but MAN it was frustrating. Weapon you picked up wears down and breaks. Food runs out so you constantly have to pick up food and water. Oh, and you need to make sure you are stocked with soap and baby wipes and... OK. So maybe not quite that bad, but it was too much. Sometimes, you get to the place where immersion is TOO real and you are spending more time doing mundane boring household chores than adventuring through a story.
Like I said, I like Send to Camp. I like Fast Travel. These make the game less tedious. I thought about Larian restricting Fast Travel so that you have to run to a Waypoint in order to fast travel somewhere, but then I thought, "Why? Just so it's annoying and boring? Do I really want to play jogging simulator?" One of the things I thought was most boring about Icewind Dale and the BG games WAS that in order to leave a cleared out map you had to constantly click on the other side of the map and watch your characters run all the way through the map until they got to the far side. Then, if you were in a deep dungeon, you had to do this like 4 times or something. SO super boring. Give me fast travel and let me zip to the exit please.
The problem I have is that there are no repercussions for this or for Send to Camp. No time passes. No resources required for said actions. You can do it as much as you want without limitation, and that negates the purpose of other things. If I can Send to Camp any and all items without restriction at all, I can do it at any time in any place, then I can literally send every useless piece of junk to camp and never lug anything extra around with me. If that's true, then why bother with encumbrance because I'll never be weighed down. So why bother with that? Also, I can painstakingly take things out of storage and sell them at a merchant, so why not an auto-sell feature so I don't have to manually do it all very slowly and painstakingly?
Unless there is some sort of resource restriction.
So here's another example of something they COULD do to limit spamming Fast Travel and/or Send to Camp. In order to use Netherese Runes, you need specific Spell Components that are used up every time you either Fast Travel or Send to Camp. Once you've used up all those specific spell components, you either have to buy more or manually walk around all over the map. Ah! So now you might not spam Fast Travel or Send to Camp as much. Now encumbrance becomes more of an issue and you will need to strategize how much you want to carry on you and maybe what you might drop or whatever.
So, my suggestions are:
1. Camping Supplies are required for Short Rests and Long Rests. Short Rests are no longer limited to 2 a day. Instead, 1 Camp Supply per Party Member Per Level for Short Rests and 2 Camp Supplies per individual at Camp Per Level for Long Rests. Shoot! You may even want to refuse to accept people at your camp if you know it's going to cost more resources to Long Rest because they're there. Another strategy element now in the game. Who do you keep in camp? Who do you take in the party? Should you take 4 or 6 or even 2 or 3 depending on the mission? If you know the more people you take the more supplies you'll need to short rest, maybe you won't take as many.
2. Fast Travel and Send to Camp are limited by Spell Components required to use the Netherese Runes. This should help reduce the spamming of these things so that players will have to carry more around on them and take less frequent trips back to the merchant or camp or whatever just to dump items or sell them. If you run out of Spell Components, and can't harvest them using a skill, you'll have to then hoof it back on foot manually. If Larian provides enough opportunities to acquire Spell Components, so that players can easily manage it as long as they aren't spamming, this wouldn't be much of an issue for anyone.
3. Useless items are able to be used for crafting. Metal spoons and forks and plates and such can be melted down and used at forges to craft armor and weapons. Instead of selling armor, you can break it down and reforge it into something else along with other items. Again, if Fast Travel is limited, you will likely carry more of this stuff around on you if you know you might encounter a workbench or forge while adventuring. As long as you can instantaneously fast travel to camp to use the workbench there, without restriction, nothing will stop the player from doing so and just pulling stuff out of storage and forging. Thus, again, no meaning in encumbrance and carrying any items at all aside from what you are equipped with.
This is what I'd like to see in the game as long as they are done well. The last thing I want is a mechanic where camping supplies are so hard to come by you can't ever rest or spell components are so hard to come by that you eventually can never fast travel or craft or whatever. As long as they keep supplying the player with a decent amount, these mechanics would then make the game more immersive, strategic and provide purpose to so many things that right now have no purpose.
